Appearance: Standing 5’10” and weighing 185 lbs, Sebastian has a vigorous, but not overwhelming, physical presence, with a lean musculature owing as much to his genes as to any dedicated training regimen. Although his ancestry is predominantly Portuguese and southern Italian, his Northern European features predominate with his light complexion and blue eyes. The main exception is his dark hair, which he keeps trimmed short. The shape of his face is still somewhat boyish, though it seems to have lost much of its cheerfulness since his return. His eyes are hard and suspicious now, and those self-satisfied smirks that some once found charming now seem uncharacteristically cruel.

Fitness Level: Sebastian possesses the normal strength of a man of his age, height, and build who engages in regular weight training, sprinting, and swimming. He has yet to fully recover from the damage caused by the CL9 drug and so still suffers from occasional bouts of weakness and fatigue.

Known Superhuman Powers: Sebastian is both a low level (Talent Level 2) Psychometrist and a potent, (Talent Level 6) Hydrokinetic. His hydrokinesis allows Sebastian to detect, move, and rapidly alter the temperature of any liquid. Control over small or diffuse volumes of liquid is very tenuous however, and amounts smaller than about 20 mL typically require direct contact to manipulate; conversely, although larger volumes require more effort to manipulate, they can be done at longer ranges. Also, the more viscous the liquid is, the less control he has over it. The maximum range of his power is about 90 feet, but he need not be able to directly see the liquid. Although this ability manifested relatively late in his life, it is quite significant, and he has moved volumes of water as large as 5000 cubic feet at one time, flash-boiled the contents of an opponent’s stomach, ruptured hydraulic conduits, and ignited kerosene. It should be noted that he loses control over any liquid that he causes to boil into a gas or freeze into a solid.

His psychometric ability, which is clinically defined as the ability to touch inanimate objects and receive sensory impressions of past events from the psychic residue left on them, sometimes manifests in a more comprehensive form including receiving psychic feedback without coming into physical contact with an object and the ability to see Kirlian auras. Curiously, he does not exhibit any of the genetic markers known to be associated with psychometry or telempathy.

Weakness: Objects or environments high in Sympathetic Intensity can induce hallucinations, disorientation, and other effects as they can in any psychic sensitive, although compared to high level sensitives, the effects are usually not as severe.

Bio:

As far as Sebastian knew, no one in his family ever demonstrated any sort of paranormal abilities (he’s wrong, but that’s a story for another day), so the mischievous 14-year-old was stunned – and thrilled – the day he discovered that he could “see” and “hear” past events when he touched certain objects. Unlike many young metahumans, he did not suffer through a period of fear and confusion: he fantasized about being a “super hero” since boyhood and had read everything he could about these mysterious people and their mysterious powers. He knew immediately what he had, right down to the decidedly un-sexy name of his Talent. Far from being ashamed, he bragged about it to his friends and family, although initially no one believed him. His sensitivity was spotty, and he often had a hard time repeating the sensations. Over the next few years, he tried to hone his psychometry both through techniques in training manuals and through the hormone-driven “experiments” thought ingenious by teenage boys, like hovering around the girl’s locker room and helping out the college aged co-eds that lived down the block with their laundry, but his Talent was not appreciably sharpened.

Sebastian’s life continued its mundane pace, and while he never abandoned his dream of costumed crime fighting, he became more realistic in his expectations. Knowing that his psychometric sense could best detect the residue of intense emotions, he started to envision himself more as a super-detective than a traditional vigilante, able to solve the most infamous crimes with supernatural ease. He began studying forensics and detective work, planning to become a private investigator. By the time he was 17, he started going out at night in disguise, patrolling the not-very-crime-ridden streets of his Shadyside neighborhood in Pittsburgh. After many painfully boring and uneventful nights, his frustrations got the better of his senses and he attacked a trio of graffiti artists, who overwhelmed him and gave him a bit of a beating. But in this nadir were the seeds of triumph: the stress of the fight awakened something in him, and in a psychic outburst he exploded their spray paint cans. The terrified punks ran away and Sebastian limped off, battered and bloody but smiling. Now, he realized, he had a real super power.

Sebastian re-embraced his ambitions to become a costumed vigilante and convinced his close friend Alex Shepherd, who wasn’t a Talent (yet) himself, to join him. At the same time, he befriended newcomer Evangeline Garver and the two were soon dating. He discovered her membership in the MetaFriends social network and decided to reveal his secret identity to her. Evangeline was reluctant to join his unofficial team, having never even considered being a crime fighter, but she ultimately agreed, both to increase the time she got to spend with her boyfriend and to hopefully prevent him from doing anything too reckless. The trio’s pursuit of a serial arsonist brought them into contact with two more amateur Talents, Meryl (Bubbles) and Andrew Deibert (Threads), who also joined the team they dubbed the East End Irregulars. Their adventures in the Pittsburgh area continued for more than a year, but as Sebastian prepared for his first year at the University of Pittsburgh, the once close-knit group fell apart.

The trouble started when his estranged brother, Robert, died of an apparent heroin overdose. The two brothers died on bad terms, and Sebastian was badly shaken, unable to deal with the guilt and anger he felt toward his brother, to say nothing of the disruption of his family. Later, Evangeline told him she had accepted a scholarship to the prestigious Mattheson Academy in New York. The couple had been planning their future together for a while and he had even decided to attend Pitt just so he could stay in Pittsburgh with her, so he felt betrayed. He gave his ultimatum, but she wouldn’t budge, and they broke up. With Eva gone and Alex ready to leave the city, Sebastian disbanded the Irregulars and dropped out of Pitt after one semester to take a job at Marathon Group. His troubles had only just begun.

Sebastian was recruited to join Talent Executive Services, a Marathon subsidiary that provided “business intelligence” (read: industrial espionage) and metahuman security for corporate clients. He volunteered for experimental treatment with Psi-Booster drug called CL9 or “Cloud 9” to improve his abilities. This enthusiasm caught the eye of Marathon CEO Marcus LeBlanc, who sounded out Sebastian’s willingness to join a covert TES team that specialized in blackmail and intimidation. Sebastian initially agreed, but was unnerved by manner of the other agents in this secret group and the inexplicably harrowing psychic impressions received from LeBlanc himself. His physical health declined in direct proportion to the rise of his anxieties: Cloud 9 had dramatically increased the control and power of his hydrokinesis, but it proved addictive and toxic. His liver failed and his life was only saved by emergency surgery. As he recovered, he feigned a psychic burnout, fearing that the only way he could get out of the sordid business he found himself in was if he appeared to have lost his powers totally. The ploy worked, and he returned to Pittsburgh, financially and morally broken.

His predicament only seemed to worsen once he returned home, however. His parents and sister were furious with him, both because he hadn’t spoken to them in nearly a year and because they saw his near-death from drugs as a mirror of self-destructive older brother. His old friends likewise felt abandoned, and although Evangeline had returned and they attempted to reconcile, he was irate at the discovery that she had had briefly dated Andy. Sebastian would have left again were he not interrupted by the attack by Sunburn and Fire Woman. Instead, the Irregulars pulled together one final time to stop them.

In the aftermath of the battle the team was invited to work for the Compass Foundation. Suspicious of a repeat of his time with Marathon Group, Sebastian declined until a private meeting with Compass’s reclusive founder, Rex Hazzard. Hazzard stunned him by revealing many details about the Marathon organization and LeBlanc’s mysterious past. He convinced Sebastian that he could help Compass oppose LeBlanc and that Compass would in turn help protect his friends and family.